


antonym

by inexorableformation



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Parent Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Post-Recall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26088163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexorableformation/pseuds/inexorableformation
Summary: "I've met your son."
Relationships: Jesse McCree & Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Comments: 3
Kudos: 82





	antonym

**Author's Note:**

> implied transphobia and a murder in this, both in the first scene

The age shows on the man's face. His hands are gnarled as he wrings them on the table, his hair is thin and white. His eyes flit back and forth, back and forth, between the door and death.

"I swear I didn't know this was Talon business," he stutters and stumbles. "I was going to kill them and be done with it, I didn't know-"

"So you've claimed."

The man cowers.

"There was a bounty on them," he says, hectic. "I needed the money. That's all there is to it, I didn't know Talon was interested in them. I didn't-"

"Quiet."

The man shuts up immediately. Sinks low in his seat and digs his chipped nails into the table, trembling like a leaf. One of his ears splits in half whenever he moves, an old knife cut. He breathes shallow through clenched teeth and swallows his spit and the rest of the excuses.

"It doesn't matter to me why you tried to kill them," Reaper says, cold, unbothered. "It doesn't change the result."

"I got in your way."

"Spare me the hubris. You're an inconvenience at most. If you were in my way we wouldn't be having this conversation."

The man grimaces.

"I know. Your reputation precedes you."

"Then you are aware of what's going to happen if you don't talk."

"I'll tell you what you want to know!" the man forces out. "No need to kill me."

" _Talk._ "

He does, stammers his way through a long-winded description. A trip on a train. An easy coup. Money, enough for another few months off the grid. Reaper lets him speak, watches him speed up as soon as the metal claws click on the table.

"I brought the fusion cores with me," the man squeaks. "I wasn't sure where to stash them so I carried them around for a while, had people after me but I knew the area. I stashed them somewhere around Deadlock Gorge, has been a while since I lived there but-"

The claws click down, all of them, all together. The man bites his tongue.

"You lived near Deadlock Gorge?" Reaper asks. Unassuming. Casual. Frozen to the core. He gets a quick nod.

"Decades ago. Just for a few years. I wasn't with Deadlock, though, I was fooling around, that's all. Lived on a farm with some stupid girl who thought I was the love of her life. I didn't stay long but I still remember where the roads-"

He keeps going. Reaper watches with the hiss of fire in his head, the feeling of the flames taking away layer after layer of skin until there was nothing left to burn. The weight in his chest is heavy. Heavier than the ash.

"I've met your son," Reaper says.

The man pauses, surprised out of the fear. Frowns.

"I didn't have a son. I had a-"

"Your son," Reaper continues, "works in a similar field. Unlike you he is good at what he does, though."

"Why're you telling me unrelated shit? I didn't care about the brat then, I sure don't care now. What about the location of the-"

The man goes quiet for the last time as his head is torn from his shoulders by a point-blank shotgun blast. The blood sprays all across the back wall, the chair, the dusty old floor. The body topples over, lays still in a rain of its own flesh.

Reaper breathes for the first time in a few minutes. Places his guns on the table. A second to rest before he rises once again. His vision flickers all the same, his claws dig into the smoke around his palms.

"Sombra," he says over the comms, the open line, with a voice so shaky the static is pervasive. "I'm not going-"

"I know," she replies. " _Mucha suerte_. And be careful."

#

Jesse McCree takes a while to pick up. He makes a disgruntled noise, followed by shuffling, followed by the sound of something plastic hitting the ground. A curse, Spanish.

"'S the middle of the night," he mumbles. "Who's this? Sombra?"

Reaper hums.

"Not quite."

He takes the silence to watch the storm clouds approach. They'll reach him soon, perched on the rooftop above the city lights. He wraps his coat around himself because the smoke alone doesn't keep him warm. The metal claw of his right hand digs into the space below his ribs. No glove on his left and the burner phone is lighter than air.

"This is, uh," McCree says, slightly more awake, "Reaper, right?"

"Do you know many other people who talk like this?"

"Point taken. Wouldn't say I know you, either, though. I know of you."

Reaper watches the first strike of lightning.

"I have a reputation."

"Eh," McCree says. "Who doesn't, honestly?"

Then, startled, as Reaper laughs, "'m not gonna ask how you got this number but what're you callin' me for? This don't sound like you're gonna threaten me."

"There's something you should know."

The first drops of rain are almost soft but the hail that arrives with it isn't. Reaper suppresses a cough, his throat filling with smoke.

"Hit me," McCree says.

"You don't seem wary at all."

"Haven't given me any reason to yet."

"I was sent to assassinate someone yesterday," Reaper says without preamble. "Hired gun, stole from the wrong people. Talon chose me for efficiency. He was a nuisance, not a threat."

"But?"

"He mentioned the woman and the kid he left behind around Deadlock territory," Reaper continues. "Brought up a farm. Older white guy, one of his ears fucked up."

McCree stays quiet for a moment, only a hitch in his breathing.

"You kill him?"

Reaper hunches over, close to the precipice.

"Yeah. He's dead."

A minute passes and the rain goes on, a downpour that never quite finds purchase on the smoke. McCree hums and it's deliberate enough for the freezing cold to hold Reaper down firmly. He feels his heartbeat in his throat.

"I appreciate the call," McCree says. "But my dad didn't die yesterday, he's been dead for ten years. Almost to the day. Burned to death, or so I heard."

The hail drums onto the stone. Reaper watches piece by piece disappear.

"That so?"

"Yessir," McCree says and sounds like he's smiling. "That's in fact so."

A few raindrops drip down the mask, slide off the surface and into the canyon between houses. Below, far below, the streetlights turn on. Reaper runs a claw across the stone but the smoke fades right through, doesn't connect with the world.

"Well," McCree says. "I reckon there's something you should know, too."

"Hm?"

"It'd be inconvenient if anyone from Talon showed up at the ol' diner on Route 66 tomorrow. Even worse if they got there around noon."

Reaper laughs with smoke in his lungs.

"That so?"

"Yessir," McCree says and the smile stays. "That'd be outright awful."

#

Reaper's skin crawls. The heat has enveloped Deadlock Gorge and it reaches him, too, as he shifts between the real world and the void. The crashed train cars still cast shadows. He follows them down the street and only takes shape before the diner itself, the glass doors that weigh nothing as he pushes them open. The dust gathers on every surface, even the wanted poster taped to the wall. More than sixty million now.

Reaper enters the diner. Most of the chairs are strewn across the floor, the faded flyers littering it like colorful leaves. Panorama diner, they say. Some of them flaunt bullet holes. In their midst, in the corner booth, sits the cowboy.

"Oh no," he deadpans. "I can't believe my double reverse psychology didn't work. So inconvenient."

He fits right into the scenery, completes the picture. The hat, the red serape, the metal arm. He's grinning.

"A shame," Reaper says as he trails closer. "When it was the perfect plan."

He sits down in the booth across the aisle. McCree stares, catches himself staring, stares again.

"Sorry. 'M just-"

"Surprised?"

"Not as much as you'd think."

Reaper blinks behind the mask.

"Oh?"

"You're so much like Reyes," McCree says, in awe, in shock, in mourning. "The way you behave and everythin'. Sometimes when you start talkin' I think all of the bullshit was just a dream. That the smoke and all that is just one o' his costumes."

Reaper laughs and it's not unhappy, it's the end of the hail and the moment his fingertips hit the concrete.

"There's some things I can't shake no matter what happens."

"Did you try to?"

"No," Reaper says. "They just didn't make it to the other side."

McCree nods, his eyes on one of the postcards on the table. It's addressed to a faceless stranger. A name in hasty scribbles. A name among many.

"You weren't kidding yesterday though, right?"

Reaper shakes his head.

"I did kill him."

"Why?"

The ice runs in his veins.

"Huh?"

"Was it a business thing?" McCree asks, neutral. "Talon business, I mean. Collateral damage? Why'd you kill him?"

The shiver of death still rests deep within Reaper and it pierces through the desert warmth. He straightens his back but his metal nails flex, threaten to maul the smoke until it learns.

"So you wouldn't have to," he says and his voice is so flat he barely hears it over the static.

McCree's eyes go wide and his jaw drops until he forces his mouth shut, clenches his teeth. His brow knits together and everything in his face spells sorrow, spells a lifetime of it.

"That's a very Reyes thing to do."

Reaper shrugs.

"Selfish is the word you're looking for."

"He wouldn't have allowed me closure, huh?" McCree asks and it's back to the postcard, the strangers, the names that neither of them recognizes. "Not you, I mean. Not Reyes, either. The guy you killed. He would have just said somethin' else, somethin' worse that I woulda carried around with me for the next thirty years."

"There was potential for that."

McCree sighs and hunches over the table, rests his forehead against the surface. The hat slides off and lands beside him.

"Fuck that," he says. "Fuck that piece of shit."

"It's not on you. Never has been."

"You've always said that."

"And I'll keep saying it," Reaper huffs. "As many times as you need to hear it."

McCree turns his head a bit, searches the mask for a reaction. Tries for another smile, a little weaker.

"That made it to the other side, huh, boss?"

"You're a good kid. That hasn't changed."

"I'm, like, forty now."

"And still my son," Reaper says.

McCree laughs and it's as carefree as they'll get.

"That would be me."


End file.
